It has been more than 30 years that statistical learning theory (SLT) has been introduced in the field of machine learning. Its objective is to provide a framework for studying the problem of inference that is of gaining knowledge, making predictions, making decisions or constructing models from a set of data. Support Vector Machine, a method based on SLT, then emerged and becoming a widely accepted method for solving real-world problems. This paper overviews the pattern recognition techniques and describes the state of art in SVM in the field of pattern recognition.